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Sunday, April 19, 2015

Can you believe it is April 19th?

Here it is the 19th of April and it only seems like it was yesterday that it was January...I guess when you are living out in the area of the country where the weather stays nice and you do not have to suffer with snow, rain, and all the other maladies of life you can forget how long it takes to find sunshine and flowers.

Yesterday I was reading about some of the pioneers who helped develop the West. It was interesting to read about some people who had been Minnesotans because they wanted to and then they branched out to make huge strides in the rest of the country. There was James J. Hill a train baron who was helped by his good friend Frederick Weyerhauser in building the rail system which extended to the Northwest. Both were very wealthy even by today's standards. St. Paul was the city which they lived in because they liked it. Weyerhauser was a man who loved the woods and back country. He had many children and a wife who he left alone a lot of the time so that he could develop relationships with other timber barons in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and then in the Pacific Northwest. There are several great books out there which bear looking into for the education of your children and their children.

Are you going to toss your hat in the ring?

Election campaigns are heating up and there are many more people stepping into the forefront so they can get their ideas into the mainstream. Realize that only one person will be President! There are so many who are announcing they are going to run, is it because they want something else out of their campaigning? Many jobs are available once the President takes office. Folks who run swiftly back the chosen candidate and help that person gain the office. It is in this spirit that the chosen one gives patronage to those who helped getting elected. Back in the day when Jimmy Carter ran I somehow had been put in place as the Chairman of Veterans for Carter in Minnesota. When he won the election I was sent an application to apply for a job in the administration in the Department of Veterans Affairs. I did not want to return to Washington DC so I declined. I still have that application. In fact, they even sent me an invitation to the Inauguration ceremonies and the balls which took place that evening. I kept those as mementos, but did not attend! Do you know how cold it gets in DC in January?

Summer is quickly coming...are you ready?

Is it quirky or is it just me? I think of the heat of summer when I am out here in the desert, but reality is that we treat summer as though it were winter here. We rarely go out into the 90 and 100 degree days. What we like best is Spring until about early June. Then we look forward to late September or early October when it cools down once again. Right now we have our tomato plants out in pots, watering them daily as it is getting into the 80's now. There are these nice green globules dangling from the plants and the yellow flowers are attracting critters which will pollinate them. We have a plum tree and it is loaded this year! The pomegranate tree is in full blossom and looks like it will have a bumper crop this year. We placed a new shed in the yard and had to trim a couple of trees to get it there. What resulted is that the trimmed trees have been going bananas and growing far larger than they ever had before.

Hoping that you all have a great summer! I would like to get out there and do some fishing for a change. Since being out here we have missed that part of our lives. In Minnesota I used to fish a lot with my great friend George from Kentucky. Life sure has changed a lot since those days. When we lived on the houseboat we did a little fishing, but never really got into it on the scale that I had done before. We purchased a lake place and it was great for fishing, but we only did a little. My step dad Max went fishing when he and my mom joined us for a vacation at our lake place. Max told me that it was the first time that he had ever gone fishing...I was happy to have given him that experience.